


War Boy

by triarii



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Trans Character, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 12:46:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4101475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triarii/pseuds/triarii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life and death of a war boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	War Boy

**Author's Note:**

> this is a trans/transmasculine headcanon fic, but this is not here to be warm and fuzzy and nice. this is a headcanon for a world where womanhood is defined by ability to breed and where kids see glory only in dying.  
> that being said, there is no transphobia, misogyny, transmisogyny, or transphobic language or violence in this fic.

You’re born sickly, but not too sickly. Your teeth are mostly good. You’re given as tithe to Immortan Joe as hope for a better life, wherever you may be useful.

Your first memories are of being looked over, examined, prodded. Even so young, something weren’t right with you, some parts not aligned right, and the organic mechanic said you’d never breed, but your head was good and your hands were nimble.

So a war pup you became, toddling about painted white and sticky with engine grease.

.

Little rev-heads all look the same, and you were a quick little black thumb so nobody much noticed when you came up short pants-off. Pups like you were unusual but not unheard of, and there were worse ways to not have a dick. It never much concerned you.

.

You get older. A smart enough little grease monkey, fingers nimble in an engine and fast and fervent to praise the V8. Your loose gaskets start to trouble you, leaving you doubled over in pain some days, something deep in your core wrecked and wrong. The night fevers near take you a few times, and you wake up one day with a tumor like a rock lodged under the skin on your ribs. You get hooked up to a bloodbag for a few days and wait it out; you were always a half-lifer, all you got to do is make sixteen and you can die on the Road instead of a disgrace in your bed. Til then, you stay with the repair boys, praying fervent to V8s that you’ll still be strong by the time you come of age so you can ride to war.

War boys like you start growing tits eventually. One of yours comes in normal, the other small and gnarled and pebbly. It hurts more often than not, but half of Joe’s pups complain that of something on them. (The other half are lying.) You bug the organic mechanic to chop them off, and he lobs a wrench at your head. You keep bugging, eager and excited, when you have the time.

.

Sixteen means you get your wheel if you’re good enough. Wheel, but no rig: the rig you’ve got to build out of salvage and scrap, buff it shiny and chrome to ride to Valhalla. If you’re too sick, half-life too short, you stay in Repair, work until you can’t stand up.

At sixteen, you’re strong, even with your lopsided tits and your barren womb and the cancers in your blood. You start building your rig.

When the war sirens go for the first time since you came of age, you’re thrown onto a car to cling to a hood, siphoning and spitting juice, face burning with the heat kicking back from the scoops, alight with the glory and fury of the road. It’s a small skirmish, but it sets your blood churning, horsepower revving. There is a car ahead of yours with a mounted gun: should you survive more battles as a hood rat, that will be your next place. You receive your first honor: the gun runs out of ammunition, and the war boy manning it stops, takes his pikes, ready to die historic. He turns, looking you in the eye, screams that you witness him as he turns his mouth chrome. You stop your siphoning midstream, mouth brimming with guzzoline, and sign the V8. He leaps, pikes exploding on impact, and enters Valhalla.

Such glory you have never seen before.

.

You’re still a repair boy when there’s no war, thumb too black to waste. One day in the shop the torches stop, buffers quiet, silence like you’ve never heard before. Footsteps ring out and suddenly you’re in the presence of God.

You line up at attention, rev-head war boys in your powder paint at front bumper, repair boys with half-lives too short to fight at rear. Immortan Joe looks none of you eyewards, just over you, respirator humming like the engine of the world.

 _I require five strong repair boys for the Gigahorse_ , says God.

You shake with fear and fervor. None volunteer; Immortan Joe will choose who will be blessed to touch his ride. Being in his presence is rapture and reverie. Here you could die happy, even outside the gates of Valhalla.

He walks down the line. He chooses three, barely gesturing, and they snap to attention, following like pups. He doesn’t even pause as he walks past you, welder still in hand, but his head jerks your direction and your heart races all-cylinders. You follow, bliss unfolding.

He watches as the five of you touch up the Gigahorse, roughed up from battle. You weld a mirror back on, get your hands anointed black with holy grease as you work on the superchargers. Occasionally you meet the eyes of the others, amazed and blessed as you touch twinned V8s, turbocharged 1200 horsepower beneath your hands. Immortan Joe and his cadre await your finish. You work quickly, silently, efficiently, and his rig gleams chrome when you are done. You will never clean the black under your nails, will never wipe this holiness from your hands. 

He surveys you all at attention before releasing you. Pausing at your cancered chest, one breast perfect and the other a knot of pain, skin pebbled and ruddy and wrecked, he stops. Immortan Joe himself looks you in the eye.

 _Unable to breed?_ he says, and you cannot even speak. You nod yes. Under his gaze you’re unsure if you’re shamed or proud that your womb never once even bled.

He considers you as your heart pounds. The boys like you are few and far between, and none have come before Immortan Joe himself. You want nothing more than to die for him. You think a brief prayer to twin V8 engines, to the Saints Coupe de Ville, to holy engine grease, that he will not cast you out.

Finally, he motions forth the organic mechanic. _Fix this boy._

Oh, you think. What a lovely day.

.

Immortan Joe blessed you with the organic mechanic’s skill, but nothing more. Anaesthetics and painkillers have never touched a war boy’s flesh machine. You go under his knife hitched to a bloodbag, your belt with Joe’s own sigil on it wedged between your teeth so you don’t bite off your own tongue. There are no straps on his table: it’s the other boys who hold you down. Surgery under Immortan Joe’s blessing is its own war, and in the chop shop someone chromes your mouth, witnessing you if you die on this road. Your head rushes, glory in the blood.

He cuts, and your throat rips from screaming through the pain. More war boys gather round, watching and screaming in the ecstasy of the blood. It is a blessing untold to get repairs.

A month hooked to a bloodbag, and you know you survived intact, no infections taking hold. Still a war boy, still born to die on the fury road. Your chest is a mess of scars and bruise, the left side a knot of sutured skin and gristle, the right nearly smooth, one long cut where your perfect breast once fell. You need no ritual scarring, now, no turbocharger carved into your flesh like some other boys do. You are one of the blessed few to have undergone repairs in the organic mechanic’s chop shop. Your body is a living engine. You live to die and live again.

.

Your wheel awaits your rig. Piece by piece you begin to put it together. Until then, you’re a hoodrat. One day, you’re thrown onto the back of a car, handed a gun. Promoted. The night fevers come and go, getting worse as your half life draws nigh. You fight harder, praying for Valhalla. More tumors appear, but you can still fight.

You get promoted to polecat, then get to ride shotgun. A boy you knew dies, and you inherit his chopper. Your wheel lies idle, for now: you need no car if you have a bike. The next battle, you ride victorious, another war boy riding passenger, a third riding a pole. You’re driving, honors untold.

.

Your bike crashes on the fury road, skidding out and away. You get thrown from it, watch an enemy rig try to swerve away. They slam into it in a wreck of twisting metal. You survive just enough to climb atop another rig, the driver slowing briefly so you can haul yourself up on the rear bumper, bleeding victorious. You had hauled two pikes off your wreck, explosive and ready. You have lived to die and live again: Immortan Joe has looked you in the eye, has personally blessed you; your hands have felt grease from his holy mount, your body has been an engine repaired by the organic mechanic’s tools. This is a fuller life than many a war boy can claim. A buzzard’s spiked excavator revs closer; your driver flicks his gaze back, his engine damaged, not enough horsepower to outrun. His manpower is elsewhere, firing their harpoons at bigger targets. You meet his eye, beg witness. He nods, his hands leaving the wheel for a breath, forming the V8. Your mouth brims with chrome.

You grab your pikes, leap, aiming for Valhalla.

They explode, and you die historic.


End file.
